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Except this is my whine day so I’m contractually obligated to complain.

Boy, was it busy. Meeting with the electrician on Friday to decide where every friggin’ light switch, plug and pot light would go took over three hours.

And then, THEN, we went to IKEA! What were we thinking? Venturing into that store requires rest and fortitude, not tired brains and aching feet. But, oh, it was lovely. I want all the things.

Thank goodness we were able to recuperate at my brother’s place in the city – good food and good times.

On Saturday, since we obviously hadn’t learned anything from surviving Friday, we shopped at Home Depot, Kents, AND Costco. Our heads need to be examined. We still haven’t found light fixtures we both can agree on. I think I’ll start a resurgence in oil lamps and candles – who’s with me?

We capped the weekend off with a lovely supper with Son1 and his partner – scallop chowder and salad and pumpkin pie and craft beer and fabulous fun. I’m exhausted but life is good.​So what all did you do? Run around like the proverbial chicken like I did? Relax and take it easy? Prepare for NaNoWriMo which starts—gaaaahhhhh!!!!—on Wednesday?

For many years we’ve grown copious amounts of green beans, sweet peppers, and tomatoes to store in our deep-freeze. A small taste of summer makes the dreariest February day a little brighter. But even with our best efforts at manual vacuum packing (sucking the air out of the zipper locked bag using a drinking straw) we inevitably lost some produce to freezer burn.

Well, in this week’s flyer from Costco I saw a food saver on sale, as well as the required storage bags. Huzzah! No more freezer burn! We can also use it when we buy freezer orders of beef, pork and chicken – a fabulous way to save money. (I’d say we could freeze cookies for long-term storage but I don’t think the food saver works on baked goods…and who am I kidding? Cookies never last that long in this house.)

Now let’s see if we can leave the store with only the food saver in our shopping cart. Ha!​Oh, and since we’ll be in the big city we’ll swing by IKEA and scope out closet innards to furnish our new walk-in. One more item to check off our to-do list.

Bruno living dangerously in his favourite evening perch.

What are you up to this weekend? Do you shop at a big wholesale club store? Do you ever stick to your list?​Cheers!

As I mentioned last week, I’m in full-on pumpkin spice flavoured foods mode. I baked these pumpkin cookies and took them to our friend’s house for our weekend stay. They were a definite hit. And boy, were they a nice treat during our deconstruction/demolition project.

The recipe only calls for one cup of canned pumpkin puree so, hm…What to do with the remaining pumpkin? Well, I’m giving this recipe a try.

My apologies for the lateness of this posting. I had a busy, tiring weekend and by the time we got home yesterday all I wanted to do was nothing. So I coloured in my colouring book whilst listening to CBC radio.

How did it get to be the last full week of October? This whacky weather doesn’t feel like early October. Today, for instance, the temperature will reach 17°C, or xx° in Fahrenheit speak. That just ain’t right. Way, way back in my early years, we had to design our Hallowe’en costumes to accommodate a winter jacket.

I do appreciate the extended spate of warm weather given that our bedroom is Mum’s old house is unheated. I’m not looking forward to chilly sheets. Too bad my hot water bottle is in a box somewhere in the storage unit.But it doesn’t feel like autumn so that’s my whine for today. For which I feel conflicted. See above.

In other news, we spent the weekend with friends and we disassembled the extra roof truss system. And we did it in one day!!! (Thank you to Ron for his knowledge and labour. And thank you to Janet for the excellent picnic lunch.) I think we recovered enough lumber to frame out the garden shed and the chicken coop.​

Here I am wielding a power tool – a dangerous prospect.

​And here’s a photo of the house progress. I love the colour more and more every time I see it.

What did you get up to on the weekend?Cheers!

P.S. I still haven’t updated my newsletter sign-up page. But I’ll be doing it soon so this might be your last chance to use the old, boring page.